For the Theists out there, do you think God created the universe from himself, from nothing, or from pre-existing material? Atheists feel free to weigh in on this yourself; which version of universal creation would you find more plausible if you were a Theist?

At 6/21/2016 10:49:16 PM, Rational_Thinker9119 wrote:For the Theists out there, do you think God created the universe from himself, from nothing, or from pre-existing material? Atheists feel free to weigh in on this yourself; which version of universal creation would you find more plausible if you were a Theist?

I'm an atheist, but I think the "Ex Deo" narrative is probably the most compelling out of those listed.

At 6/21/2016 10:49:16 PM, Rational_Thinker9119 wrote:For the Theists out there, do you think God created the universe from himself, from nothing, or from pre-existing material? Atheists feel free to weigh in on this yourself; which version of universal creation would you find more plausible if you were a Theist?

At 6/21/2016 10:49:16 PM, Rational_Thinker9119 wrote:For the Theists out there, do you think God created the universe from himself, from nothing, or from pre-existing material? Atheists feel free to weigh in on this yourself; which version of universal creation would you find more plausible if you were a Theist?

I go with Ex Deo. Ex Materia is unparsimonious and ad hoc (why would there be material hanging out with God just so he can create a material universe if he wants?). Ex Nihilo seems absurd as it it involves something from nothing. Ex Deo falls in line with Idealism nicely because if God is a grand consciousness and he creates the universe from his substance then the universe would essentially be constituted of consciousness as well.

At 6/21/2016 10:49:16 PM, Rational_Thinker9119 wrote:For the Theists out there, do you think God created the universe from himself, from nothing, or from pre-existing material? Atheists feel free to weigh in on this yourself; which version of universal creation would you find more plausible if you were a Theist?

I think Ex Nihilo fits the word creation the best. However, Ex Deo, which I would call extension rather than creation, strikes me as the most plausible. Ex Materia doesn't really fit the concept at all.

Out of curiousity, why? Doesn't something from something make more sense than something from nothing?

In general, yes. I subscribe to creation ex nihilo because it seems to be what the Bible teaches, and it also avoids an infinite causal and temporal regress. Idealism seems like an easy way to avoid both problems, but I just can't bring myself to believe it.

I am a fat man.

"Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education." ~Aristotle

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle

Out of curiousity, why? Doesn't something from something make more sense than something from nothing?

In general, yes. I subscribe to creation ex nihilo because it seems to be what the Bible teaches, and it also avoids an infinite causal and temporal regress. Idealism seems like an easy way to avoid both problems, but I just can't bring myself to believe it.

Out of curiousity, why? Doesn't something from something make more sense than something from nothing?

In general, yes. I subscribe to creation ex nihilo because it seems to be what the Bible teaches, and it also avoids an infinite causal and temporal regress. Idealism seems like an easy way to avoid both problems, but I just can't bring myself to believe it.

Because of a prior religious indoctrination ?

Are you asking me about why I embrace ex nihilo or why I reject idealism? I think I reject idealism more because it flies in the face of my common sense notions about the world. When I'm standing in front of a tree or a cat, I can't shake the overwhelming impression that it's a real physical object in front of me. Hearing arguments for idealism is like hearing arguments against motion from Zeno's paradoxes. I see the strength of the arguments, but they are not enough to overcome my strong intuition that something has gone awry. There are many Christian idealists, some of whom I respect, so the idea may not be entirely inconsistent with Christianity, so no, it isn't because of religious indoctrination that I reject idealism. It is partly because of religious indoctrination that I subscribe to creation ex nihilo, though.

I am a fat man.

"Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education." ~Aristotle

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle

Out of curiousity, why? Doesn't something from something make more sense than something from nothing?

In general, yes. I subscribe to creation ex nihilo because it seems to be what the Bible teaches, and it also avoids an infinite causal and temporal regress. Idealism seems like an easy way to avoid both problems, but I just can't bring myself to believe it.

Because of a prior religious indoctrination ?

Are you asking me about why I embrace ex nihilo or why I reject idealism? I think I reject idealism more because it flies in the face of my common sense notions about the world. When I'm standing in front of a tree or a cat, I can't shake the overwhelming impression that it's a real physical object in front of me.

And RT would respond, it's all in the mind, all in the mind...............

Hearing arguments for idealism is like hearing arguments against motion from Zeno's paradoxes. I see the strength of the arguments, but they are not enough to overcome my strong intuition that something has gone awry. There are many Christian idealists, some of whom I respect, so the idea may not be entirely inconsistent with Christianity, so no, it isn't because of religious indoctrination that I reject idealism. It is partly because of religious indoctrination that I subscribe to creation ex nihilo, though.

Then why not reject all sorts of christians claims that also run counter to intuition ?

Or does your religious belief get a pass on the whole intuitive test ?

Out of curiousity, why? Doesn't something from something make more sense than something from nothing?

In general, yes. I subscribe to creation ex nihilo because it seems to be what the Bible teaches, and it also avoids an infinite causal and temporal regress. Idealism seems like an easy way to avoid both problems, but I just can't bring myself to believe it.

Because of a prior religious indoctrination ?

Are you asking me about why I embrace ex nihilo or why I reject idealism? I think I reject idealism more because it flies in the face of my common sense notions about the world. When I'm standing in front of a tree or a cat, I can't shake the overwhelming impression that it's a real physical object in front of me.

And RT would respond, it's all in the mind, all in the mind...............

Hearing arguments for idealism is like hearing arguments against motion from Zeno's paradoxes. I see the strength of the arguments, but they are not enough to overcome my strong intuition that something has gone awry. There are many Christian idealists, some of whom I respect, so the idea may not be entirely inconsistent with Christianity, so no, it isn't because of religious indoctrination that I reject idealism. It is partly because of religious indoctrination that I subscribe to creation ex nihilo, though.

Then why not reject all sorts of christians claims that also run counter to intuition ?

Or does your religious belief get a pass on the whole intuitive test

This seems like an unnecessary(and unfruitful) line of questioning, rather than being genuine curiosity. I do not believe he is a pure intuitionist. Nonetheless, one can reserve judgment based on the strength of the arguments for Christianity versus the strength of the arguments of Idealism.

In fact, I would argue Idealism has very few positive arguments(some powerful ones though). However, the best arguments come against the dualistic and materialist view. Further, if you think he is wrong, why do you reject idealism?

If it is simply intuition, are you a straight intuitionist? As you will see, these things are not mutually exclusive.

Out of curiousity, why? Doesn't something from something make more sense than something from nothing?

In general, yes. I subscribe to creation ex nihilo because it seems to be what the Bible teaches, and it also avoids an infinite causal and temporal regress. Idealism seems like an easy way to avoid both problems, but I just can't bring myself to believe it.

Because of a prior religious indoctrination ?

Are you asking me about why I embrace ex nihilo or why I reject idealism? I think I reject idealism more because it flies in the face of my common sense notions about the world. When I'm standing in front of a tree or a cat, I can't shake the overwhelming impression that it's a real physical object in front of me.

And RT would respond, it's all in the mind, all in the mind...............

Hearing arguments for idealism is like hearing arguments against motion from Zeno's paradoxes. I see the strength of the arguments, but they are not enough to overcome my strong intuition that something has gone awry. There are many Christian idealists, some of whom I respect, so the idea may not be entirely inconsistent with Christianity, so no, it isn't because of religious indoctrination that I reject idealism. It is partly because of religious indoctrination that I subscribe to creation ex nihilo, though.

Then why not reject all sorts of christians claims that also run counter to intuition ?

Or does your religious belief get a pass on the whole intuitive test

This seems like an unnecessary(and unfruitful) line of questioning, rather than being genuine curiosity. I do not believe he is a pure intuitionist. Nonetheless, one can reserve judgment based on the strength of the arguments for Christianity versus the strength of the arguments of Idealism.

I disagree, people are good at coming up with various reasons as to why they support and reject something, but then you apply that same reasoning to what ever and still go along with it.

Reason vs excuse................kinda a crucial difference.

In fact, I would argue Idealism has very few positive arguments(some powerful ones though). However, the best arguments come against the dualistic and materialist view. Further, if you think he is wrong, why do you reject idealism?

In order to demonstrate my answer, I will require video recording eqputiment, RT, and me b*tch slapping RT into eternity with him remarking over and over again, this doesn't prove anything.

In the name of science of course.....................

If it is simply intuition, are you a straight intuitionist? As you will see, these things are not mutually exclusive.

Out of curiousity, why? Doesn't something from something make more sense than something from nothing?

In general, yes. I subscribe to creation ex nihilo because it seems to be what the Bible teaches, and it also avoids an infinite causal and temporal regress. Idealism seems like an easy way to avoid both problems, but I just can't bring myself to believe it.

Because of a prior religious indoctrination ?

Are you asking me about why I embrace ex nihilo or why I reject idealism? I think I reject idealism more because it flies in the face of my common sense notions about the world. When I'm standing in front of a tree or a cat, I can't shake the overwhelming impression that it's a real physical object in front of me.

And RT would respond, it's all in the mind, all in the mind...............

Hearing arguments for idealism is like hearing arguments against motion from Zeno's paradoxes. I see the strength of the arguments, but they are not enough to overcome my strong intuition that something has gone awry. There are many Christian idealists, some of whom I respect, so the idea may not be entirely inconsistent with Christianity, so no, it isn't because of religious indoctrination that I reject idealism. It is partly because of religious indoctrination that I subscribe to creation ex nihilo, though.

Then why not reject all sorts of christians claims that also run counter to intuition ?

Or does your religious belief get a pass on the whole intuitive test

This seems like an unnecessary(and unfruitful) line of questioning, rather than being genuine curiosity. I do not believe he is a pure intuitionist. Nonetheless, one can reserve judgment based on the strength of the arguments for Christianity versus the strength of the arguments of Idealism.

I disagree, people are good at coming up with various reasons as to why they support and reject something, but then you apply that same reasoning to what ever and still go along with it.

Reason vs excuse................kinda a crucial difference.

In fact, I would argue Idealism has very few positive arguments(some powerful ones though). However, the best arguments come against the dualistic and materialist view. Further, if you think he is wrong, why do you reject idealism?

In order to demonstrate my answer, I will require video recording eqputiment, RT, and me b*tch slapping RT into eternity with him remarking over and over again, this doesn't prove anything.

In the name of science of course.....................

If it is simply intuition, are you a straight intuitionist? As you will see, these things are not mutually exclusive.

Well your argument about slapping RT is just as irrational as his excuse against Naturalism.

Further, your reasoning on different reasoning on different issues is fairly simplistic. For example, I reject moral intuitionism because it simply explicates the nature of morals but not how to come to them or use them. The Categorical Imperative according to Kant himself is very much the same thing, however he also gives us good reason to believe why this is sufficient after explicating the theory.

Out of curiousity, why? Doesn't something from something make more sense than something from nothing?

In general, yes. I subscribe to creation ex nihilo because it seems to be what the Bible teaches, and it also avoids an infinite causal and temporal regress. Idealism seems like an easy way to avoid both problems, but I just can't bring myself to believe it.

Because of a prior religious indoctrination ?

Are you asking me about why I embrace ex nihilo or why I reject idealism? I think I reject idealism more because it flies in the face of my common sense notions about the world. When I'm standing in front of a tree or a cat, I can't shake the overwhelming impression that it's a real physical object in front of me.

And RT would respond, it's all in the mind, all in the mind...............

Hearing arguments for idealism is like hearing arguments against motion from Zeno's paradoxes. I see the strength of the arguments, but they are not enough to overcome my strong intuition that something has gone awry. There are many Christian idealists, some of whom I respect, so the idea may not be entirely inconsistent with Christianity, so no, it isn't because of religious indoctrination that I reject idealism. It is partly because of religious indoctrination that I subscribe to creation ex nihilo, though.

Then why not reject all sorts of christians claims that also run counter to intuition ?

Or does your religious belief get a pass on the whole intuitive test

This seems like an unnecessary(and unfruitful) line of questioning, rather than being genuine curiosity. I do not believe he is a pure intuitionist. Nonetheless, one can reserve judgment based on the strength of the arguments for Christianity versus the strength of the arguments of Idealism.

I disagree, people are good at coming up with various reasons as to why they support and reject something, but then you apply that same reasoning to what ever and still go along with it.

Reason vs excuse................kinda a crucial difference.

In fact, I would argue Idealism has very few positive arguments(some powerful ones though). However, the best arguments come against the dualistic and materialist view. Further, if you think he is wrong, why do you reject idealism?

In order to demonstrate my answer, I will require video recording eqputiment, RT, and me b*tch slapping RT into eternity with him remarking over and over again, this doesn't prove anything.

In the name of science of course.....................

If it is simply intuition, are you a straight intuitionist? As you will see, these things are not mutually exclusive.

Out of curiousity, why? Doesn't something from something make more sense than something from nothing?

In general, yes. I subscribe to creation ex nihilo because it seems to be what the Bible teaches, and it also avoids an infinite causal and temporal regress. Idealism seems like an easy way to avoid both problems, but I just can't bring myself to believe it.

Because of a prior religious indoctrination ?

Are you asking me about why I embrace ex nihilo or why I reject idealism? I think I reject idealism more because it flies in the face of my common sense notions about the world. When I'm standing in front of a tree or a cat, I can't shake the overwhelming impression that it's a real physical object in front of me. Hearing arguments for idealism is like hearing arguments against motion from Zeno's paradoxes. I see the strength of the arguments, but they are not enough to overcome my strong intuition that something has gone awry. There are many Christian idealists, some of whom I respect, so the idea may not be entirely inconsistent with Christianity, so no, it isn't because of religious indoctrination that I reject idealism. It is partly because of religious indoctrination that I subscribe to creation ex nihilo, though.

To be fair, you would be hard pressed to find a philosophy of mind that is not counterintuitive. My mind certainly doesn't seem physical, it seems to have properties nothing physical could have so the idea that Physicalism is true runs counter to intuition. Something spiritual being able to have such seemless causal interactions with the material even through they are ontologically distinct and don't share properties that allow for such interaction is extremely counterintuitive (if not impossible), so Dualism runs counter to our intuitions about interaction. At least we have examples of trees and cats existing mentally (hallucinations and dreams), making the idea that empirical reality is also mental not so out of the ordinary. The only difference would be that the empirical mental reality is collectively shared from different perspectives instead of private.

At 6/24/2016 2:13:20 PM, philochristos wrote:Hearing arguments for idealism is like hearing arguments against motion from Zeno's paradoxes. I see the strength of the arguments, but they are not enough to overcome my strong intuition that something has gone awry. There are many Christian idealists, some of whom I respect, so the idea may not be entirely inconsistent with Christianity, so no, it isn't because of religious indoctrination that I reject idealism. It is partly because of religious indoctrination that I subscribe to creation ex nihilo, though.

Then why not reject all sorts of christians claims that also run counter to intuition ?

Or does your religious belief get a pass on the whole intuitive test ?

There's nothing in Christianity that I find nearly as counter-intuitive as I find idealism to be. But in the case of problems with the Christian worldview that I don't know how to resolve, I put those things in the "reasons Christianity might not be true" side of the scale, and I balance it against the "reasons Christianity might be true" side of the scale. As long as the case for seems stronger to me than the case against, I continue to believe in Christianity even though there are problems with it that I can't answer. I do that with pretty much everything, because there are always going to be anomalies or difficulties with pretty much any worldview you subscribe to to try to make sense of things.

But there are a handful of things that although they are not necessary truths, and even though I can't prove any of them, they have such a strong appeal to intuition for me that I don't know if there's much of anything that could shake my belief in them. They include things such as. . .

1. That my senses are giving me true information about a real external world.2. That my memories are giving me true information about a past that actually happened.3. That past experience can give me some probability about how I should expect things to be in the future.4. That some things do cause other things.5. That time is real.6. That I myself continue to exist through time and change, and I didn't just pop into existence a minute ago complete with false memories of a past that didn't actually happen.7. There other beings have minds and subjective awareness just like I do.8. That my actions arise out of my own intentions, and my motives and intensions are not passive, and the sense I have of acting on them is not an illusion.

And there are a few other things I could list if I sat here and thought about it long enough.

I am a fat man.

"Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education." ~Aristotle

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle

Out of curiousity, why? Doesn't something from something make more sense than something from nothing?

In general, yes. I subscribe to creation ex nihilo because it seems to be what the Bible teaches, and it also avoids an infinite causal and temporal regress. Idealism seems like an easy way to avoid both problems, but I just can't bring myself to believe it.

Because of a prior religious indoctrination ?

Are you asking me about why I embrace ex nihilo or why I reject idealism? I think I reject idealism more because it flies in the face of my common sense notions about the world. When I'm standing in front of a tree or a cat, I can't shake the overwhelming impression that it's a real physical object in front of me. Hearing arguments for idealism is like hearing arguments against motion from Zeno's paradoxes. I see the strength of the arguments, but they are not enough to overcome my strong intuition that something has gone awry. There are many Christian idealists, some of whom I respect, so the idea may not be entirely inconsistent with Christianity, so no, it isn't because of religious indoctrination that I reject idealism. It is partly because of religious indoctrination that I subscribe to creation ex nihilo, though.

To be fair, you would be hard pressed to find a philosophy of mind that is not counterintuitive.

I would agree that any philosophy of mind is going to have difficulties. As you've said before, substance dualism has the interaction problem. But for me, substance dualism has the least problems when I take everything I know into account, whether we're talking about my intuitions about the external world, or my first person awareness of the content of my own mind, or whatever.

My mind certainly doesn't seem physical, it seems to have properties nothing physical could have so the idea that Physicalism is true runs counter to intuition.

I wonder if we are using "intuition" the same because it sounds to me more like you reject physicalism due to an argument rather than due to what think of as "intuition." Maybe what you mean is that some of the premises in your argument are things you know by intuitions, e.g. facts about your mind. When I think of intuition, I think of things we know immediately upon reflection as opposed to things we derive through a process of reasoning from prior premises. For example, I know intuitively that I am perceiving what I take to be a computer screen because I have immediate access to my own mental states. There are some items of intuitive knowledge I think we can know with absolute certainty, including items of knowledge about our own first person subjectivity, but also items of knowledge about math, logic, and geometry, i.e. necessary truths. But there are other items of knowledge that do not express necessary truths, but that seems to be built into us, and they include things such as our knowledge that there's an external world, there's a past, there are other minds, that the future will resemble the past, that there is causation, etc. I include morality in that, too. Neither physicalism nor substance dualism seem to run counter to any of these types of intuitions--at least not for me. Idealism does, though.

Something spiritual being able to have such seemless causal interactions with the material even through they are ontologically distinct and don't share properties that allow for such interaction is extremely counterintuitive (if not impossible), so Dualism runs counter to our intuitions about interaction.

I think that's the biggest problem with substance dualism, but it doesn't strike me as being counter-intuitive in the same sense that denying the physical reality of the external world seems counter-intuitive.

At least we have examples of trees and cats existing mentally (hallucinations and dreams), making the idea that empirical reality is also mental not so out of the ordinary.

I think idealism is certaintly analogous to dreaming or hallucinating, so I can understand using that as precedent or at least for allowing the possibility. In fact, I DO acknowledge the possibility that idealism is true. Like I said above, the claim that the external world exists does not express a necessary truth.

The only difference would be that the empirical mental reality is collectively shared from different perspectives instead of private.

The idea that a subjective mental experience, like perception, could be shared collectively strikes me as being just as problematic as the interaction problem. Even if it's the case that a single God is feeding the same consistent information into each of our minds so that we each see a tree or a cat, we're not all seeing the same actual tree or cat. In fact, we're not interacting with each other at all. At best, we're interacting with a representation of each other. The other person could cease to exist in reality, and it would be possible for God to continue feeding information into our heads as if the other person were still interacting with us. So there's little reason to think that the people wandering around in our sensory perceptions are real people at all except our hope that God is being honest and consistent. Doesn't that strike you as being somewhat counter-intuitive?

I am a fat man.

"Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education." ~Aristotle

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle

The only difference would be that the empirical mental reality is collectively shared from different perspectives instead of private.

The idea that a subjective mental experience, like perception, could be shared collectively strikes me as being just as problematic as the interaction problem. Even if it's the case that a single God is feeding the same consistent information into each of our minds so that we each see a tree or a cat, we're not all seeing the same actual tree or cat. In fact, we're not interacting with each other at all. At best, we're interacting with a representation of each other. The other person could cease to exist in reality, and it would be possible for God to continue feeding information into our heads as if the other person were still interacting with us. So there's little reason to think that the people wandering around in our sensory perceptions are real people at all except our hope that God is being honest and consistent. Doesn't that strike you as being somewhat counter-intuitive?

Let me expand on this with an analogy. Let's suppose you and I both go to sleep and have a dream. And let's suppose that by some strange improbable luck, we both have identical dreams in which you and I have a conversation that goes like this:

RationalThinker: Hi philochristos. What brings you here today?Philochristos: I don't know how I got here to be honest with you.RationalThinker: Really? Are you suffering from amnesia or something?Philochristos: Maybe. Anyway, it's great to finally meet you.RationalThinker: You, too! Let's find something to argue about.Philochristos: Hold on. I have to use the bathroom first.

If it just happened by luck than you had this dream of having this conversation with me, and I had this same dream of having this conversation with you, and we both saw the same trees and the same scenery and everything, it would still be the case that you and I were not actually communicating with each other. I was communicating with a projection of my own mind, and you were communicating with a projection of your own mind.

If it turned out that the projections in each of our minds were planted in us by God instead of us dreaming them up ourselves, the only thing that would change is that it would no longer be strange luck that we happened to have mental perceptions of this conversation happening. But it would still be the case that you and I were not actually interacting with each other. I would be interacting with a mental image that God implanted in my head, and you'd be interacting with a mental image that God implanted in your head. I would not even have to exist for you to have that exact same experience, and you would not have to exist for me to have that exact same experience.

I see that as a problem with idealism. Idealism not only goes up against our intuitions about an external world, but it also seems to go up against our intuitions about other minds.

I am a fat man.

"Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education." ~Aristotle

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle

I would agree that any philosophy of mind is going to have difficulties. As you've said before, substance dualism has the interaction problem. But for me, substance dualism has the least problems when I take everything I know into account, whether we're talking about my intuitions about the external world, or my first person awareness of the content of my own mind, or whatever.

Well Idealism doesn't necessarily deny an external world, it just needs to deny that if there is an external world it is non-mental in nature. Particle physicists like John Samual Hagelin are actually exploring the idea that consciousness is the unified field which all the fundamental forces and particles reduce to. So in this view you can keep your intuition about there being a computer screen in front of you and be correct, but that doesn't say anything about the deep ontological nature of the computer. I think that is something scientific and philosophical debate must cover, as our intuitions are not enough for that feat.

I wonder if we are using "intuition" the same because it sounds to me more like you reject physicalism due to an argument rather than due to what think of as "intuition." Maybe what you mean is that some of the premises in your argument are things you know by intuitions, e.g. facts about your mind. When I think of intuition, I think of things we know immediately upon reflection as opposed to things we derive through a process of reasoning from prior premises. For example, I know intuitively that I am perceiving what I take to be a computer screen because I have immediate access to my own mental states. There are some items of intuitive knowledge I think we can know with absolute certainty, including items of knowledge about our own first person subjectivity, but also items of knowledge about math, logic, and geometry, i.e. necessary truths. But there are other items of knowledge that do not express necessary truths, but that seems to be built into us, and they include things such as our knowledge that there's an external world, there's a past, there are other minds, that the future will resemble the past, that there is causation, etc. I include morality in that, too. Neither physicalism nor substance dualism seem to run counter to any of these types of intuitions--at least not for me. Idealism does, though.

Again, Idealism need not deny an external world, only the non-mentality of it's nature if there is one. Either way, as Bernardo Kastrup notes, people often conflate the aspect of the mind they identify themselves with with the mind as a whole which leads to false conclusions based on their intuitions. It certainly seems as if my i-phone exists outside of the aspect of mind I identify with, but no reason to think it exists outside of mind itself. In a dream for example, you can experience a phone, it exists beyond the aspect of mind you identify with in the dream but obviously not your mind itself (that dream phone still exists within mind).

I think that's the biggest problem with substance dualism, but it doesn't strike me as being counter-intuitive in the same sense that denying the physical reality of the external world seems counter-intuitive.

I think the interaction problem is fatal to Substance Dualism. If the spirit and the material were going to interact then they would have to interact via shared properties (or else their properties wouldn't "recognize" each other and their ontological distinction would entail causal disconnection). However, if they share properties then they are not fundamentally different substances at all and Monism entails. Thus, SD is incoherent.

At least we have examples of trees and cats existing mentally (hallucinations and dreams), making the idea that empirical reality is also mental not so out of the ordinary.

I think idealism is certaintly analogous to dreaming or hallucinating, so I can understand using that as precedent or at least for allowing the possibility. In fact, I DO acknowledge the possibility that idealism is true. Like I said above, the claim that the external world exists does not express a necessary truth.

An external world can exist under Idealism, the ontological nature of that world would have to be mental though, or else how could our minds have ideas that resemble material objects? That makes as much sense as the claim that a shape can resemble a smell; it's incoherent as we are talking about two completely different categories. So if there is something "out there" causing my perceptions it must also be composed of ideas. As Bishop Berkeley notes, "an idea can be nothing like but an idea".

The only difference would be that the empirical mental reality is collectively shared from different perspectives instead of private.

The idea that a subjective mental experience, like perception, could be shared collectively strikes me as being just as problematic as the interaction problem.

Well collectively cohered, as in, if you throw a ball at me I will experience the ball getting closer to me, you will experience the ball going farther away. Of course, we aren't sharing the exact perception, but our perceptions cohere.

Even if it's the case that a single God is feeding the same consistent information into each of our minds so that we each see a tree or a cat, we're not all seeing the same actual tree or cat.

Not necessarily, again there are many forms of Idealism, some which grant an external world but just an external world made up of mental properties. Either way, the mental program running in God's mind which includes the tree certainly explains our experience of the tree from different perspectives without a material tree needed.

In fact, we're not interacting with each other at all. At best, we're interacting with a representation of each other. The other person could cease to exist in reality, and it would be possible for God to continue feeding information into our heads as if the other person were still interacting with us.

Couldn't something similar occur of Dualism were true as well though? Couldn't I cease to exist in the material world with God feeding a collectively cohered hallucination in people's spirits of me as if I were still here? This possibility is not limited to Idealism.

So there's little reason to think that the people wandering around in our sensory perceptions are real people at all except our hope that God is being honest and consistent. Doesn't that strike you as being somewhat counter-intuitive?

The problem of other minds is a problem regardless of whether Idealism is true or not. How can you be sure everyone around you are not philosophical zombies? Idealism rejects the material because it is problematic, there is nothing problematic about other minds so no more reason to doubt them under Idealism than any other philosophy of mind.

I'm an atheist, but I think this problem is about the limitations of our own minds. Evolution wouldn't develop expensive brains just for the joy of giving us a clear sense of reality. That's nonsensical, but the idea lingers on from Christianity. According to us, you can't create something from nothing, and there must be an agent to create something, in this case it's God. Those are rules from the human world though, so if I believed in God, I wouldn't necessarily apply them.

At 6/21/2016 10:49:16 PM, Rational_Thinker9119 wrote:For the Theists out there, do you think God created the universe from himself, from nothing, or from pre-existing material? Atheists feel free to weigh in on this yourself; which version of universal creation would you find more plausible if you were a Theist?

Ex nihilo.

"Delete your fvcking sig" -1hard

"primal man had the habit, when he came into contact with fire, of satisfying the infantile desire connected with it, by putting it out with a stream of his urine... Putting out the fire by micturating was therefore a kind of sexual act with a male, an enjoyment of sexual potency in a homosexual competition."

Well Idealism doesn't necessarily deny an external world, it just needs to deny that if there is an external world it is non-mental in nature.

This clears up a lot for me. I don't think your version if idealism is nearly as problematic as the version I was criticizing that I thought was what you believed.

I'm not even 100% sure which version I subscribe to, all know is that the existence of the material is fatally problematic, which Dualism and Physicalism both adhere to so I naturally went to Idealistic direction after being a Physicalist (and Atheist) for a long time.

Well Idealism doesn't necessarily deny an external world, it just needs to deny that if there is an external world it is non-mental in nature.

This clears up a lot for me. I don't think your version if idealism is nearly as problematic as the version I was criticizing that I thought was what you believed.

Out of curiousity I would like to know what arguments there are for trusting our intuitions as much as you do? You seem to have admitted that you are fairly closed off to any ideas that run counter to things that seem intuitively obvious to you (like an external world existing, or time existing). I can't say I'm sypathetic to such a position, and I would like to understand it more. For example, if I were to present you with an argument against time that made sense and that you couldn't undermine, would you still believe in time merely because it seems like there is time? I think logical arguments against X trump "well it really seems as if X is true".

Well Idealism doesn't necessarily deny an external world, it just needs to deny that if there is an external world it is non-mental in nature.

This clears up a lot for me. I don't think your version if idealism is nearly as problematic as the version I was criticizing that I thought was what you believed.

I'm not even 100% sure which version I subscribe to, all know is that the existence of the material is fatally problematic, which Dualism and Physicalism both adhere to so I naturally went to Idealistic direction after being a Physicalist (and Atheist) for a long time.

If you're an idealist, and you believe there's an external world that's all mental or the product of what is mental, then it seems like whether the "stuff" in the external world is physical is just a matter of semantics. I mean all you're basically saying is that cats and dogs are made out of stuff that is mental at a really basic level, but the macroscopic properties are still properties we associate with what is physical. So couldn't you say the physical world exists, but that it is reducible to the mental or made up of mental properties or something like that?

I am a fat man.

"Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education." ~Aristotle

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle

Well Idealism doesn't necessarily deny an external world, it just needs to deny that if there is an external world it is non-mental in nature.

This clears up a lot for me. I don't think your version if idealism is nearly as problematic as the version I was criticizing that I thought was what you believed.

Out of curiousity I would like to know what arguments there are for trusting our intuitions as much as you do? You seem to have admitted that you are fairly closed off to any ideas that run counter to things that seem intuitively obvious to you (like an external world existing, or time existing). I can't say I'm sypathetic to such a position, and I would like to understand it more. For example, if I were to present you with an argument against time that made sense and that you couldn't undermine, would you still believe in time merely because it seems like there is time? I think logical arguments against X trump "well it really seems as if X is true".

I don't know if I'm completely closed off to any idea to the contrary, but it would take a heck of an argument to talk me out of these intuitions.

There are a few reasons I put so much confidence in my intuitions about the external world, etc.

First, it's because I can't help it. I don't feel like these beliefs are choices. I just reflect honestly on my own convictions and find myself believing. In spite of the arguments I've entertained, and imagining things being different, the bottom line is that I believe these things with quite a lot of conviction, and no exertion of mental energy seems to be able to change them.

Second, it's because it seems prima facie more reasonable to affirm these things than to deny them. The suggestion that things might be otherwise strikes me as pure madness, even though it used to be fun to sit around with my other nerdy friends as a teenager and into my early 20's and talk about how the world might be completely different.

Third, it's because it seems almost necessary to affirm these things in order to think and reason about most other things in life. These items of knowledge aren't the sorts of things I reason to, but the sorts of things I reason from. They make up the bedrock or foundation of my knowledge about the rest of the world. This is especially the case when it comes to the external world and the uniformity of nature.

I am a fat man.

"Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education." ~Aristotle

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." ~Aristotle